Chapter 33
I kept walking, eyes straight ahead.
Law enforcement would have intervened. Hotel staff would’ve called the cops. Maybe it was one of Lyon’s watchers…I’d just committed criminal trespass, willful imprisonment, assault.
My phone buzzed again.
She’s alone. Orrin’s on his way.
She…. Something clicked into place, and I replied:
5’7, dark hair, hands in pockets?
The dots pulsed, then: Can’t see hair, but otherwise. Who?
I put the phone away. The less Arabella knew, the less likely she was to get involved.
Neutral ground, a crowded public place. I headed west, at a pace Orrin couldn’t maintain.
On Tenth Avenue, a dog run stretched beside a set of handball courts. Although the sun was barely risen, the run was busy, animals full of energy, humans drinking coffee and watching. I lingered at the fence, in full sight of a dozen people.
My stalker came to stand beside me.
Bianca Lindqvist had made only a passing effort at disguise. A hoodie over her head, a KN95 with a clown’s smile covering her mouth—the sort of thing you’d wear to intimidate someone. Or kill them.
Her hands were in her pockets. I couldn’t see Arabella yet.
“My team spotted you,” I said. “They’ll be here soon.”
The look in her eyes matched the cartoon smile. “Are you afraid of me, Jessica?”
“No. But it’s bad form to shadow another family’s operation.”
“It’s bad form to snitch about Helshire.”
I hesitated. This wasn’t the accusation I’d expected.
“I’m not a snitch,” I said.
A bored sigh. “You told your family about the Hefnd, just like I thought you would. Predictable Jessica.”
“I don’t care about your little murder club, Bianca.”
She cocked her head, staring at me. As if she expected me to cut myself again to prove my honesty.
“If it wasn’t you, then why did your family burn down Halcyon Hall?”
A sharp sound escaped me. “What?”
“Nothing burns like that on a rainy night, not without help.”
I tried to shut out the yapping from the dog run, gathering my thoughts. “Why would my family do that?”
“Because you told your elders about Hefnd, and they think we killed Peter, because we’re chaotic and out of control. My aunties think you’re going to war with us!”
I shook my head. “There’s no war. No one thinks you killed Peter.”
“Then who the fuck burned down Halcyon Hall? The Daisy Singers?”
“I did.”
Bianca went silent for a moment. “On your own? Not for the family?”
I nodded.
“You built an incendiary bomb?” she went on. “If someone handed you a Molotov cocktail, you’d drink it.”
“Peter built it—for his Hefnd. He wanted to impress you.”
Bianca turned away from me, staring at the dog run as she considered this. An Aussie sheepdog came toward us, sniffed our knees through the fence, and trotted away again.
“It was certainly impressive,” she finally said. “The foundation cracked from the heat.”
“If he’d used it on people, the FBI would’ve shown up and never left.”
“Then why the hell did you set it off?”
“Because of what you did to Peter! He was making headway with his roommate, but he played your little Hefnd game instead. He threw away his future.”
She stared at me. “What do you mean, his future? He fell.”
I said nothing.
Finally, understanding reached her eyes. “So he was culled.”
“Also me,” I said.
Maybe it was my missing night of sleep, or the leftover burn in my muscles from the wrack, but a lightness came over me at this confession. As if gravity had switched off and I could float into the air.
Now that Bianca knew, everyone would. I had been blooded on my own cousin, had burned down Halcyon Hall. No more secrets.
Very slowly, she pulled off the mask. “We thought you loved Peter.”
“I did.” I took a breath. “That’s why I blew up your clubhouse.”
“Revenge,” she said, a slow smile coming over her face. “Your own little Hefnd. Maybe you aren’t such an aunties’ pet.”
“You aren’t angry?”
“Xavier will be furious, but he’ll forgive you. We can find another place. You keep surprising me, Jessica.” She was staring at the dogs again. “This explains why your cousin called last week.”
“Sebastian?”
She nodded. “Drunk and ranting, angry at the rest of you. Wouldn’t say why.”
I’d sent Sebastian more texts—asking him about Albany, telling him about how much he’d have loved the scene at Mixed. But instead of answering me, he was drunk dialing Bianca Lindqvist.
“In honor of Peter,” she said, “he committed a little Hefnd of his own.”
“What did he do?”
A low laugh rolled through her. “Ask him yourself, Jessica.”
“That’s Aunt Jessica to you,” I said.
Bianca snorted at this, putting her mask back on. “I’m glad we had this little chat. Mawmaw Brynhild will be pleased to hear about Peter. She loves a good culling.”
“Whatever settles things down,” I said.
“Oh, this isn’t settled,” Bianca said, the clown smile matching her eyes. “Things are just getting interesting.”
With those words, she walked away.
Bianca would tell her elders about my destruction of Halcyon Hall. If I was lucky, the Lindqvists would only burn me in effigy for a decade or so.
A moment later, a figure emerged from the handball courts and made a slow circle of the dog run. It was Arabella, headed toward me, her eyes following Bianca.
“What was that?”
“Helshire stuff,” I said.
“A fire on a rainy night?”
I didn’t answer.
“Jessica,” she said. “Helshire is where the four families bump against each other. You have to be careful there. If any trouble spills beyond those ivy walls, Elizabeth will have your skin.”
“Whatever happens, it’ll be my problem.”
Arabella grunted, pulling out her phone to text. Across the park, Uncle Orrin glanced down at his screen. He waved at us and began to limp toward the exit.
“Thanks for the backup,” I said.
“Babysitting is my full-time job. Do I need to start running overwatch on you again?”
I shook my head. “Tell the family not to worry.”
“The elders aren’t worried, Jessica. They think Halcyon was struck by lightning. They have no idea what goes on there.”
“But you asked me about the fire the day after I got here.” I stared at Arabella for a moment, then reached out and took her left hand. She didn’t stop me as I pushed up the shirtsleeve—on her forearm was a tattoo, small enough to be mistaken for a blemish. Heart-shaped, black.
A Hefnd mark, just like Bianca’s.
“You killed someone? For personal reasons?”
“For justice. I’ll tell you about it sometime.” Arabella smiled. “I was the first Morton invited in. They wanted something from me.”
The family secret. The story of Uncle Max.
“Your junior year,” I said, “Yvonne and Tobias didn’t show up at Helshire. That’s when they knew for sure the cousins were gone.”
“I never told them why. I assume they still don’t know.”
“They asked Sebastian to join last year, thinking he might let it slip.”
“Sebastian, doing a Hefnd?” Arabella let out a sharp, hard laugh. “He’s too busy charming his enemies to kill them.”
“Maybe.” He’d done something up in Albany.
Arabella was staring at me. “What do you mean ‘maybe’?”
“No idea,” I said. “Nobody tells me anything.”